The extra UI addition I made in Photoshop to the left should be something we see in PA for raising and lower all kinds of terrain by hand. Eg., sand dunes, making custom lakes, custom mountains, AND 9001 OTHER POSSIBILITIES! You could select brush size, and a circle brush will appear on the screen instead of a mouse cursor, like the one in the picture. Then you could select if you want to add terrain or remove terrain, and if you want to add terrain, there should be an element selection UI part where you can chose what you want to add. It would be awesome to be able to add trees, sand, water, rocky terrain, lava, etc. Uber this would make the system designer the best map maker of all time for just about any RTS game. @jables
So basically not a fixed brush (that's what I thought when I read "custom brush") but rather a generic "sphere", "cube" or "<insert random simple geometry form here>" brush that takes parameters that determine it's size and what texture to use to make it colorful. That would indeed be a very powerful feature. Though adding trees and rocks would not be part of that. Adding trees and rocks falls under "adding features at a fixed position", which is also a feature that would allow for a lot more fun stuff. Especially since features can have gameplay effects. For example you could make a "hot steam" feature and make a geothermal plant that needs that feature. Just like mex need mex spots.
Well that would be cool too but this is talking about adding and subtracting ACTUAL terrain, like subtracting land terrain with a brush to make a lake.
What's the difference to what I describe? "fill the resulting hole with water" can be described as a parameter of a brush.
